Just 5-minutes ago I was scrolling through realestate.co.nz (looking for one of our advertisers) and spotted a RaboPlus advertisement offering 4% on 3-month term deposits. I’m not sure what is more ironic, the fact that I got excited about a 4% rate for some of our savings (the last one I did paid 8.6%!) or the fact that I did the absolute opposite of what the performance-based banner was asking me to do. Instead of clicking (sorry Alistair – I owe you $0.20), I opened my other browser (Safari doesn’t play well with Rabo) logged into my Rabo account and transferred some money.
Ahhh the power of online advertising beyond the click. If I’d been watching TV (which I don’t do anymore) I may have forgotten about it soon after. Likewise if I was in a train, on a bus or in a car reading papers, billboards or listening to the radio.
If my very small sample of one example doesn’t resonate, try this ComScore presentation that works through the brand-building impact of online advertising on some 80 leading brands.
Alistair Helm. July 13th, 2009 at 9:31 am.
Josh,
Not a problem in terms of the click thru – we can accrue the 20c towards a coffee sometime. I was however disappointed that you were not on the site checking out a new house!
Seriously though – the fixation on the clicks is so narrow focused by advertisers, the business world has spend 100 years on brand equity and brand building – do we as business people seriously believe that the future can be left to Google rankings and low price??
The power of the web to expose metrics is fantastic – but it reminds me of a story some years ago (showing my age) when BMW first brought out those gauges telling you how much petrol you used per mile – a person was stopped by the police on the M1 north of London doing an ever declining speed as he drove solely focused on this gauge. It is important to to keep a wide perspective in business!
Metrics: What are you objectives? « craigadolph.com. July 13th, 2009 at 11:22 pm.
[...] Borthwick of Adhub wrote in a recent blog post about the power of online advertising beyond the click. His anecdote is that he saw an online ad and then instead of clicking on it, he opened another tab [...]
Emily Dunsmore. July 14th, 2009 at 6:23 pm.
Congratulations Josh, you became a post-view acquisition!
I think it’s important to note that an online campaign can track a user who sees the display ad and converts without clicking. The loop hole here is if you see the ad at work and then go home and sign up on your personal computer. Unfortunately, the change in browser means the acquisition would not be attributed to online; but no DR medium is perfect, right? :)
Josh Borthwick. July 15th, 2009 at 11:15 am.
I agree with Emily’s comments around conversions etc – of course I wouldn’t classify Online as a DR medium though – I think that’s only half of what it offers.
Bill Bartmann. September 4th, 2009 at 9:57 am.
Excellent site, keep up the good work